Featuring Kim Gordon, Son Little, Big Thief and more

Here we are, in the twilight of the 2010s, waxing poetic on the decade’s best albums while we simultaneously slurp up new ones. The release roll will start to slow in the coming months as the year wraps up, but as of now, there’s still plenty of new music to drink in (even if, like me, all you really want to listen to is the new Angel Olsen album on repeat). There’s a chill in the air, new albums in the queue and candy corn on the shelves. We are really living. Read on for all of today’s (Oct. 11) new goods.

SoCal beach bum band Allah Las, now sans hyphen, know how to transmogrify their home state’s pale blue skies and deep blue waters into sun-kissed guitar licks that channel the Beach Boys (obviously) and other psychedelic-pop touchstones. In a recent single “In The Air,” they tackle the innocent joys of hot-air balloon flight in typically chipper fashion. The brief song (only two minutes!) has a backbeat you could skip to, creamy multi-tracked harmonies, and catchy, reverb-heavy guitar riffs: the elements of a summer pop classic from 50 years ago. The track was the lead single off their new and fourth album, LAHS, which sees them depart from their beloved California to go on a rock odyssey across the globe, à la Khruangbin’s great Con Todo El Mundo. —Substitute Thapliyal

When an artist releases two studio albums in one year, it’s customary for critics to grumble about hubris, usually accompanied by the suggestion that the two separate releases should have been whittled down into one. Often—as with Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience and its turgid sequel—this charge is accurate. With Big Thief, it won’t be. Both records stand as outstanding and individual statements from a band operating at some rare creative peak. Both records (today’s Two Hands and May’s U.F.O.F.) deserve to exist, and we’re fortunate that they do. —Zach Schonfeld

“Shiny New Model,” from NYC band Bodega’s new EP of the same name, folds in quiet meditations on the sterility of late-capitalist innovations and the complicated realities of the gig economy. “Tell me don’t you relate to the state of that silver sepulchre?” frontman Ben Hozie asks in relation to ATMs. “Tell me don’t you feel used? Buttons pressed in the back of a bodega.” He’s singing over a pirouetting guitar line and an intimate bass groove. It’s not quite glam, not quite grunge, but just the right combination of both. —Harry Todd

The enduring angst of the pioneering indie-rock group Cursive has carried them onward to release another collection of songs more than 20 years into their formation. The sessions that formed the majority of songs across Get Fixed happened concurrently with the recording of the Omaha group’s last release, 2018’s Vitriola. While the project was originally intended to be a double album, they began to realize they had too many ideas to trim down to one release—so they split it in half. A year out from their initial recordings, Cursive hit the studio again to record some new songs and strengthen others—this time with a new drummer, Pat Oakes. —Hayden Goodridge

Bluegrass experimenters The Dead South have never been content to play roots music the traditional way. The group skyrocketed to internet fame in 2016 with the release of their jivey and jokey “In Hell I’ll Be In Good Company,” and now they’re preparing to release their third full-length LP, Sugar & Joy, on Six Shooter Records. “Blue Trash” is a smug response to bluegrass traditionalists and a real stomper. —Ellen Johnson

Devon Welsh’s billowing synths, crushing strings and subtle percussion are striking on their own, but the former Majical Cloudz frontman’s rich vocals are his guiding light, always building a robust emotional tension. With his new record, Welsh set out to deconstruct societal preconceptions and redefine love and masculinity. “As you get older, love becomes so much stranger than the childhood fantasy versions of yearning and desire,” Welsh says. “Romance can be such a scary thing because there’s so much trust involved—sitting with uncertainties and reservations, taking a longer look at emotions, trying to understand them. But there’s a deepening of love, which is the energy that holds people together.” —Lizzie Manno

Giants Of All Sizes marks the eighth full-length release from British rockers Elbow, who shared their most recent album Little Fictions in 2017. Giants finds them taking a softer approach, or as frontman and songwriter Guy Garvey describes it: “an angry, old blue lament which finds its salvation in family, friends, the band and new life.” —Ellen Johnson

Kim Gordon doesn’t put much stock in the superlatives that have piled up around her over the years: pioneer, visionary, icon, legend, beacon. “Being referred to as an ‘icon,’ blah blah blah,” she said recently in the New York Times. “What does that even mean?” Now, at the age of 66, Gordon steps out with No Home Record, a ferocious solo debut. It’s jagged, chaotic and mesmerizing in a way that pulls you inevitably into the thick of it, as if the songs were exerting their own inescapable gravity. —Eric R. Danton

It started off as a joke, a fan term for Ruston Kelly’s tar-tinged country songs. But then Dirt Emo became real (or as real as this t-shirt, anyways) and Kelly dubbed it his “official genre.” Now the emo-obsessed singer is taking Dirt Emo to the next level with Dirt Emo Vol. 1, a collection of cover songs, including some that are characteristically emo (My Chemical Romance’s “Helena” and Dashboard Confessional’s “Screaming Infidelities,” which will actually feature DC frontman Chris Carrabba) and also songs that are just emotional in nature (Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well,” certified emotional banger). Oh, and there’s a cover of Wheatus’ “Teenage Dirtbag.” It’s a mixed bag, indeed, and everything I could ever hope for in an EP called Dirt Emo. —Ellen Johnson

Aaron Earl Livingston, aka Son Little, is back today with a new EP, invisible, his first new record since 2017’s lovely New Magic. Livingston plays almost every instrument on the EP himself. These rich songs offer a taste of what’s to come on his forthcoming full-length, due out next year. “hey rose,” a single from the EP, sways a bit from Son Little’s folkish tendencies and leans into soul and R&B sounds, making for a swirling combination. —Ellen Johnson